Shofar FTP Archive File: camps/auschwitz/auschwitz.014

Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history
Subject: Holocaust Almanac - The Children of Auschwitz at Play
Summary: A Polish prisoner relates how the numbers of children killed
were estimated by the prams left outside the crematoria, and
a Jewish survivor discusses the games played by the children.
Reply-To: kmcvay@nizkor.no-spam.org
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Auschwitz,Terezin
Lines: 139
Archive/File: camps/auschwitz auschwitz.014
Last-Modified: 1994/01/26
"A child in Terezin might still sense the protection of adults
powerful enough to secretly defy the injunction against educating
children. But the process of community destruction begun in the
cites, and escalated in the ghettos, the concentration camps, and
finally the death camps, rendered adults powerless to protect the
young in Auschwitz. Protection now existed only in the isolated
acts of a few people conspiring together to hide a sick child from
the ruthless selection of the weak for death, or of an inmate
warning mothers on the arrival platform to say a ten-year-old was
fourteen (thus making the child a candidate for slave labor rather
than for immediate death).
One survivor, Esther Wajs, reports that women on the arrival
platforms in August 1944 were warned, 'Vilt ihr lebn bleibn --
varft avek die kinder' (If you want to remain alive -- throw the
children away.) <3>
We had great difficulties with the youngest children. We
tried to tell the children stories about life as we wished
it to be. But when we couldn't take care of them they
played out life the way they lived it. They played 'Block
Leader' and 'Concentration Camp Chief,' and 'Roll-Call.'
They played 'The Sick' who fainted during roll call and
were beaten for it, or 'Doctor' who took away your food
ration and refused help if you would not give it to him.
Once they also played 'Gas Chamber.' They made a big hole
into which they shoved stones one after the other. These
were supposed to be the people who came to the
crematorium, and the imitated their screams. I was asked to
show them how to erect a chimney. <4>
The situation of children in Auschwitz is discussed in an exchange
between Prosecutor Smirnov and Witness S. Smaglewska, before the
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946.
SMIRNOV: Did you yourself see the children being sent to the gas
chambers?
WITNESS: I used to work very close to the railway lines leading
to the crematorium. I used often to stand near the
lavatory in the early morning; from here I could watch
what happened to the convoys without being noticed. I
saw lots of children with the Jewish people who were
brought to the camp. Some families had several
children. The Court is aware, no doubt, that a
selection was made before the people were sent to the
crematorium.
SMIRNOV: The selection was made by doctors?
WITNESS: Not always; sometimes it was done by SS men.
SMIRNOV: But there were doctors there too?
WITNESS: Yes. At the time when these selections were made, only
a few of the young and healthy Jews were admitted to
the camp. Women carrying children were sent to the gas
chambers seperately. When the extermination of the Jews
in the gas chambers was at its height, orders were
issued that children were to be thrown straight into
the crematorium furnaces, or into a pit near the
crematoriu, without being gassed first.
SMIRNOV: How am I to understand this? Did they throw them into
the fire alive, or did they kill them first?
WITNESS: They threw them in alive. Their screams could be heard
at the camp. It is difficult to say how many children
were destroyed in this way.
SMIRNOV: Why did they do this?
WITNESS: It's difficult to say. We don't know whether they
wanted to economize on gas, or if it was because there
was not enough room in the gas chambers. I should like
to add that it is impossible to say exactly how many of
these people -- Jewish people, for instance -- were sent
straight to the crematoria. They were not registered or
tattooed, and often they were not even counted. Those
of us prisoners who tried to keep a check on the number
of children gassed had no means of judging except by
the number of prams brought into the store-room.
Sometimes there were a hundred, sometimes even as many
as a thousand.<5>
...
It is difficult to establish the number of children who were killed
in Auschwitz. At the Nuremberg Trials, witnesses game approximate
numbers. According to Poltawska, some based their estimates on the
number of prams left in front of the crematoria. <7> Kraus and
Kulka estimated that a million children under sixteen were killed.
<8> Kulka reported also that blood was taken from children
recovering from typhoid to provide immunization for the Reich
army.<9>
On November 26, 1944, Himmler, foreseeing defeat and concerned for
his own survival, gave the order to shut down the crematoria.<10>
Frantic efforts to destroy evidence ensued, to dismantle the
machinery of death. Potential witnesses, including children, were
shot or taken away on death marches. The skies were red as the camp
warehouses burned for days. Bursts of gunfire could be heard
drawing closer with the approach of the Russian front. On January
27, 1945, the day the camp was liberated by the Russian soldiers,
approximately three hundred children were found, barely alive."
(Moskovitz, 20-23)
Author's End Notes:
< 3> Esther Wajs, eyewitness account #1354/1306, Yad Vashem Archives,
Jerusalem.
< 4> Hanna Hoffman-Fischel in Deutchkron, 'Kinder in Ghettos und
Lagern: ihrer war die Ho"lle' (Cologne: Mohn, 1965), p. 54
< 5> S. Smaglewska, Nuremberg testimony, 1946, in Kraus and Kulka,
"The Death Factory," The Death Factory: Documents on Auschwitz
1966. (New York: Pergamon Press, 1966) pp. 112-14.
< 7> Ibid.
< 8> Kraus and Kulka, op. cit., p. 107
< 9> Erich Kulka, taped interview, Los Angeles, 1979.
<10> Erich Kulka, 'Auschwitz Hefte' [the records of transports and
events kept by the SS in Auschwitz] II, 12 (1944).
Work Cited
Moskovitz, Sarah. Love Despite Hate: Child Survivors of the Holocaust and
Their Adult Lives. New York: Schocken Books, 1983

This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
to combat hatred.
Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.

As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and
provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.